9 Ups And 7 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (Jan 21)

3. Banks, Rousey Turn It Up To 11

sasha banks ronda rousey
WWE.com

Sometimes, it just takes a lot of old-fashioned jaw-jacking to really ramp up a feud.

In this case, Sasha Banks and Ronda Rousey’s war of words escalated Monday night, with Rousey getting more and more worked up, while Banks simply egged her on. It was the veteran getting under the rookie champ’s skin and exploiting it, even knocking her off the apron with a cheap shot to open their tag bout.

The competitive animosity worked really well, with the two of them lunging at each other before and after the match. It was more fire than Sasha had shown in months, lighting into Ronda on the mic (“Who the hell do you think you are?”) and antagonizing her opponent to keep her off-balance.

While Banks is likely a sacrificial lamb on Sunday, she looked more like a contender Monday night than she had in a while, with the feud getting more juice behind it. So good on them.

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Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.